The Political Economy of Fertility in the British West Indies 1891-1921

Crisis in the Global Economy:
Its Effect on the Quality of Life
in the Region

One of the central themes of this thesis is that the variations in the fertility
performances in the region are attended by differing concatenations of
the elements that constitute the productive infrastructure of the various
territories. It has been posited that local socioeconomy, in order to be
properly understood, must be seen as integrally related to the wider world
economy. Yet the character of that which is local colours the influences of
the wider world within which it functions. The cost of imported basic
foodstuff is one means by which the wider world economy makes its
presence felt at the regional and local levels. It is also a proxy of the cost of
living in general. The extent to which these two statements are true of any
territory is dependent, to a large extent, on the local production structure. In
utilizing the cost of basic imported foodstuff as a socioeconomic index, the
expectation should therefore be that its relatedness to the demographic
sphere will manifest spatio-temporal variability in keeping with the posited
nature of the societal context.

The Global Economy and the Cost of Living

The global economy intruded into the social and economic life of the
peoples of the region in fundamental ways. One measure of this intrusion
on the quality of life that obtained was the cost of living. Oftentimes it is
only possible to derive a proxy of this phenomenon because of the dearth of

Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: The Political Economy of Fertility in the British West Indies 1891-1921.
Contributors: D. A. V. Brown - Author.
Publisher: University of the West Indies Press.
Place of publication: Mona, Jamaica.
Publication year: 2000.
Page number: *.

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